Grand Naratives are those deeply accepted societal myths of Universal Emancipation, absolute truth and the speculative unity of all knowledge.  These mythologies, according to Lyotard are used to legitimate and support others (Progress, Objectivity etc.) which frame and order how we conceive of knowledge itself and within this, how we perceive ourselves as rational subjects, how we define the quality of humanness etc. From this perspective, each epistemological discipline usually asserts its legitimacy by reference to something outside of itself, ultimately to one of these Grand Narratives. Epistemological reality is by this means subject to a continual and necessary process of external legitimation. Most recently interrogated by Lyotard, the term “narrative” is taken to mean those “stories” that makeup our understanding of reality. Lyotard does not distinguish between stories that are “more” or “less” real, seeing all stories in the context of the power play of social relations. At a more philosophical level the issue of narrative also deals with the issue of the location of meaning – ie, author-audience, and calls into question the works of Saussure, Lyotard, Barthes etc.